Latest News from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnian Serbs Change Law to Defy International Envoy’s Decisions
The National Assembly in the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska Entity adopted amendments to the Law on Publishing Laws and Other Regulations on Wednesday evening to stop publishing decisions by the Office of the High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the entity's Official Gazette, which would render them invalid.
Descendants of Bosnian and Armenian Migrants Keep Ancient Ways Alive in Albania
Kapidani is cataloguing any documents that he can find about his ancestors. "We've collected documents and testimonies from the elders, aiming to reconstruct their trip by land and sea," Kapidani told BIRN.
Back in the 1870s, Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the most culturally diverse parts of the Balkans, was mired in a multisided conflict.
In Montenegro, Memories of Pain and Generosity on the Refugee Road
Dejan, then 20, had been nearing the end of his military service in Kosovo, then a southern province of Serbia, when NATO launched air strikes to halt a brutal Serbian counter-insurgency war. At the time, Serbia and Montenegro were all that was left of Yugoslavia, still joined together after the other four republics - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia - had seceded.
Venice Commission, OSCE, Criticise Bosnian Serbs ‘Foreign Agents’ Bill
The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's constitutional law experts, and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, ODIHR, have warned that the new draft law in Bosnia's Republika Srpska entity on the "Special Registry and Publicity of the Work of Non-Profit Organisation", dubbed the "foreign agents law", "contains serious deficiencies".
Teacher Injured in School Shooting in Bosnia, Former Pupil Arrested
A teacher has been shot and is undergoing medical treatment after a 13-year-old opened fire in an elementary school in Lukavac in northeast Bosnia on Wednesday morning.
"The suspect is a child who is not yet 14 years old (born in late June 2009). The child is being held at Lukavac Police Department," Admir Arnautovic, Tuzla Canton Prosecutor's Office's spokesperson, told the media.
Bosnia CSOs Warn that New FOI Bill Will Limit Citizens’ Rights
A group of 20 civil society organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered in the Initiative for Monitoring European Integration, has issued a warning on "the shortcomings of the Draft Law on Freedom of Access to Information of Bosnia and Herzegovina," which Bosnia's state-level government, the Council of Ministers, adopted on April 12.
Once a War Criminal, Always a War Criminal?
The question of rehabilitation and reintegration of war criminals has not attracted much attention either in the countries of the former Yugoslavia or internationally. This is somewhat odd considering that 59 of 91 individuals sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY have already been released from prison after serving sentences for grave crimes.
Analysing Algorithms: Bosnian Media Complain of Facebook Guessing Game
But editors and journalists in Bosnia tell BIRN they struggle with its inconsistency in content moderation and a lack of transparency about its algorithms. And when they call Facebook for clarification, too often they are left hanging.